Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to internet searching, and more particularly, to generating topic pages through an algorithm that assembles contents in response to analyzing a search query.
Description of the Related Art
With the proliferation of information available on the internet, the internet has become an effective search tool. A search engine equipped with a search tool receives a query with one or more keywords, uses the keyword(s) to search a repository of information available to the search engine and returns a plurality of search results that match the search query. The search results are returned in the matching order of the keyword(s) with the highest amount of match being at the top. To narrow the search results, additional keywords may be used. Additional related pages, including online advertisements, are generated based on the matched keywords. This works well, when the query includes keyword(s) that are unambiguous or is location independent. However, when a query includes keyword(s) that are ambiguous, the search results returned may not reflect the true interest of the user, the true intent of the search query, or it may be hard to find relevant information due to large number of results. The search tool on the search engine, in this instance, uses an algorithm that is most likely based on historical click throughs to arrive at the search results page (topic page) that may include topics and search results not relevant to the search.
Generating topics for a search page takes lot of effort. For instance, each of the search result may be tagged for a particular topic. Such tagging is usually done manually as and when the search result content page is made available on the internet. With the constant streaming of information on the internet, such manual efforts may not be practical or viable. Further, for an ambiguous query, expected information from a search query in one geo location may be different from another geo location. For instance, a user looking for information on a simple search query, such as “Saturn”, in America may be actually looking for information on “Saturn” cars and a user in India may be looking for information on the planet Saturn. In another instance, a user looking for information on “Eagles” in Philadelphia may be looking for information on a football team bearing the name while a user in Wisconsin may be looking for information on the bird, and a user in California may be looking for information on Eagle scouts.
It is in this context that embodiments of the invention arise.